The American Churchman: How British Evangelicals Misunderstand Trump Support

Welcome to the American Churchmen podcast, where we encourage men to live up to their calling that God has given them.

And I am John Harris. I have my co -host with me, Matthew Pearson, today. How are you doing, Matthew?

I'm doing good, John. How about yourself? I am doing great. We had our Thanksgiving last week.

I smoked a turkey for the first time, and it actually turned out pretty good, so I'm happy with myself. Very nice.

My dad put me in charge of turkey this year, so I spatchcocked it, and then we put it in the oven, and I butter basted it and all that.

This was one of the first years where the white meat was actually really juicy, so we were happy about that.

Yeah, mine was too. I was surprised. They say that you're supposed to catch the drippings and put it back on.

I didn't even do that, and it came out pretty good. But I also smoked some ribs, and I think when it came time for leftovers and everyone got their boxes to take home, no one took turkey home, and everyone took ribs home.

So I had like six racks of ribs, and I was left with hardly anything, so those were a big hit.

Yeah, I know. I like ribs. I like ribs more than turkey. But turkey's tradition, though.

I mean, you've got to do tradition, right? If you're an American, you're going to make a turkey on Thanksgiving. There's no way around it.

I mean, I've had years where we haven't done it, but it just feels like something's off when you don't have a turkey. So anyway, it was good, and of course, in sunny Florida, I don't really know how you celebrate these holidays.

We actually had – it was pretty cold. We had some flurries, and today, actually, it even snowed, believe it or not.

So that, to me, signals holidays are here, and tis the season to be jolly. That's what

I hear, at least. So true. Yeah, it's getting chilly in Florida, so not the most fun. That's why you see me in a hoodie right now, but yeah.

Well, we got our Christmas tree up. My little daughter was just laughing at the lights.

She's – all these firsts. It's really fun. But we got some stuff to talk about today, so I figure we'll jump into it, and it is

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Matthew or myself or whatever you want to do. So Matthew, we have an attribute of God.

This is actually, you would think, a simple attribute, because everyone understands God is spirit.

But it's kind of involved, if you think about it. So I'll pitch it to you on that.

Yeah, absolutely. So our attribute that we are covering today is God as spirit or the spiritual nature of God.

And so to kind of kick us off on this topic, I figured we would read just two verses, one from the

Gospel of Luke and one from the Gospel of John. So Luke 24, verse 39, it's the

Lord Jesus speaking after he's been resurrected. He says, Behold my hands and my feet, that it is

I myself. Handle me and see, for a spirit hath not flesh and bones as ye see me have.

And then our next verse is from John 4, verse 24, where it's again the Lord Jesus speaking. And he said,

God is a spirit, and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.

So when we talk about God as spirit, spirit is an attribute of God. And fundamentally, when we say it's an attribute of God, we say that it's like a negative attribute.

So this is a bit kind of like simplicity or immutability in that what it primarily is saying is what

God is not. So it's a negative attribute saying what he is not. So when we say that God is spirit, we're basically saying that he is in his own essence.

He is incorporeal, or in other words, he's without a body. So God is without a body, and he's invisible.

I haven't looked at our little docket, but maybe invisibility is another attribute. But it has heavy overlaps with God being spirit.

But yeah, so we say in saying that God is spirit, we're saying he's incorporeal. He is without a body.

Next week we're doing invisible, just so you know. Are we? Well, there we go. We'll touch on it again then.

So it'll be a bit of an expansion on this topic. So that's fun. So yeah, when you may say, now there's many attributes of God that we go over, where when

I explain it, you may think it's just kind of philosophical mumbo -jumbo. You may think of many scriptures that contradict what

I say, perhaps. So when I say that God is without body, you may say, oh, well, scripture talks about Christ sitting at the right hand of the

Father. Oh, hand. So God the Father has a hand. Or God sees. What do you see with?

You see with eyes. Therefore, God has eyes. So people may think of those verses when they hear me say

God is incorporeal. He is without a body. But when scripture ascribes bodily features of God in the same way when scripture ascribes certain emotions to God, we're to understand these in an analogous manner.

So for if we were to take these texts, which state that God has eyes, hands, and other things, if we were to take those literally, you know, we should also do, we should also take other passages literally, such as those that talk about God having wings and feathers, such as in Psalm 91 verse 4.

And if we, yeah, so if we want to be consistent, then God not only has hands and eyes, but he also has wings.

And he literally covers the people of Israel with them. And so we obviously know that's not the sense that the text is communicating.

We understand that speech speaking in an analogical fashion. And so on that basis, we can say

God is without, he's without incorporeal or he's without corporeal parts.

And an attribute that we covered a few weeks ago, which is again, another negative attribute, which is divine simplicity, the doctrine of divine simplicity itself actually naturally leads to an understanding that God is spirit.

For if God is without incorporeal parts. So if God is without passions or parts like incorporeally, then he surely is also without corporeal parts as well.

The scriptures speak of God. And so the reason you may be wondering, okay, if that's the case, why even bother?

Why is the scripture has to say that God like sees, or God like hears with his ears, or he has a right hand that the sun sits next to.

What's the point of even doing that then? Well, the reason why the scriptures speak this way is because it's using human language in order to condescend to us.

So we can understand the transcendent God, because the transcendent nature of God is so great and vast that it makes us unable to know anything about him, unless he condescends to us and he reveals himself to us.

And an interesting tweet that I actually wanted to bring up that I saw today, it's not directly about the spiritual nature of God, but it's a tweet kind of about classical theism, which would include this idea of God being incorporeal,

God being spirit. But it was actually a tweet from Peter Lightheart. And he wrote today, he said, classical theism isn't liberalism, but it makes the same move as liberalism.

And then he puts in quotes. Yes, the Bible says God gets angry, but we know that's a symbolic accommodation.

And then right underneath that, to kind of like pick at the guys, have a more classical understanding.

He then puts, yes, the Bible says Jesus rose from the dead, but that's a symbol for the renewal of faith in a sad, dark world, almost implying that if we don't take many of these passages in a lens, then there's no reason we take passages about the resurrection in a literal sense.

And like I stated earlier, if we want to follow Lightheart's logic here, we would have to ascribe wings to God.

We would have to ascribe like all these things that we clearly know are being used in an analogical manner to God.

And then the resurrection example doesn't follow because of the fact that, I mean, it's clearly not an illustration.

If there was just about the resurrection, and it just said Jesus rose from the dead, that'd be fine. But the fact that Jesus goes out of his way to confront the disciples, to show them his hands and his feet, like the verse that we had just read from Luke 24 -39, behold my hands and my feet, that it is

I myself. Handle me and see, for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have.

So it's clearly not the right way to conceptualize God, to ascribe to him like these passions and these parts.

And I brought up Lightheart's tweet because it was timely, because it was today. And it's an example of some of the problems you run into when you deny a more classical understanding of these attributes of God.

So that's my spiel for today. That is the spiritual nature of God. Yeah, I mean,

I think of the Psalms and so much of the figurative language and different genres of literature are going to have different figures of speech that they employ.

And there's understandings that we, like proverbial sayings are different than absolute sayings.

And in the Psalms, when David says things like, God will cover me in the shadow of his wings.

Is he talking about littoral wings? Of course not, but we understand it to be poetic. And in the same way, the comparison being a dove or a bird who covers the young, what do they call young birds?

Chicks? Yeah, we'll go with that. Little birds, youngens, under her wings.

That's how God tenderly will approach his children and shield us.

It's not saying that God's literally a bird. But we understand in narratives, when we're talking about actual events that took place in history, like the resurrection of Christ, we're dealing with something different than that.

And it's curious to me that, yeah, I don't even know what to make of that. It's odd to try to flatten everything into, it's all,

I guess, a wooden literalism. I don't know if that's what Lightheart was getting at there. But as far as the spiritual nature of God, this is something obviously beyond us.

Now, here's a question, though. This is interesting to think about, because we have spirits as well, right?

We have souls, and there's an immaterial part of every person that exists on this earth.

And that portion of ourselves, this is why it's so important to believe the gospel of Jesus Christ, because at least in one part of the,

I suppose you could say the benefits of this is being in a right relationship with God, where we spend eternity with him.

Well, how do we do that? Well, it's because there's a side of us that dies physically when we die.

But there's a side of us that keeps on going. And there's a spiritual side of us. And we also are told we're going to get a new body.

And Christ's body walks through buildings. And so we don't even know quite what that looks like yet.

But there is this spiritual world that we don't quite understand. And so this is something that, and this is where I'll pitch it back to you.

This is something we do share with God in one sense, but we also don't share with God. So how does

God being a spirit differ than the fact that we have souls ourselves, non -material parts to us?

Well, I would say that that is a sense in which we are similar in a sense.

And we have to be very careful when we speak this way, because even in saying that God is spirit and we have a spirit, we just, we have to be very careful to not necessarily conflate the manner in which our spirit is akin to God's spirit.

But we can say that in a sense, like, yeah, we share in that manner that we also have an incorporeal part to us, but our incorporeal part to be actually a person.

So it's united to our body. So we are not just a spirit. We're not just a body.

We are a union of body and spirit. So that's how we are. And we can still subsist in the spirit without the body necessarily, but we eventually will be reunited with our bodies.

And a really cool thing to think about is God, who is in his own, by his own essence, a spirit.

He himself, through the person of Christ, joined himself to a human body in order to renew us, in order to redeem all of creation.

And to this very day, as you said, John, he continues to have a body and Christ forever will have a body.

He sits in heaven right now with scarred feet and scarred hands, ruling and reigning, and he will continue to do so until he returns.

And then he makes all things new. So it's a beautiful thing to think about. We obviously have to be careful to not conflate our own spirit with the spirit of God in that sense, just because of the transcendent nature of God.

And if you gave me like, I don't know, some like super scholastic old treatise or whatever, I could maybe be able to distinguish my categories a little bit better and a little bit more sharper.

But that's how I would put it there. Well, I think of God's spirit as being one of perfection and one without limitation that we cannot, some of the other attributes we've talked about are possible because God is a spirit.

He can be omniscient. He can be omnipresent. These aren't things that we, we are limited by a body, but our spirits are also, in a sense,

I don't want to say, I realized if I kept going down that vein, I could say some stuff that could be theologically dicey.

So I'm going to back off that and just say this. Our spirits are not, do not have the same capabilities as the spirit of God.

And you even look in scripture and see how the Holy Spirit works in preventing

Paul from going to certain regions, inspiring, I mean, like, going demons, you have this to actually going into people and influencing them in ways.

I mean, these aren't things that we do with our spirits. So there is a difference. And, you know, and one of the things

I already mentioned, but I think it's so important to mention again, is that because of total depravity, we also have a marred spirit, a spirit in need of redemption.

And this is not something that, you know, God, he's perfect. The angels themselves, you know, there's no concept of this.

So anyway, there's a lot more that I would love to dig into and figure out.

And I think the Bible probably has its own limitations on what we are to know about these things.

But, but yeah, God is God can manifest himself in theophanies, but he is a spirit ultimately.

Yeah. And yeah. So good. Good word. All right. Well, I don't see any questions about that.

I see some statements, but we'll move on to the topic at hand. We're going to talk today about why

British evangelicals misunderstand American evangelicals' affection for Trump. If we have time, maybe we'll get into some of this empathy stuff from the review of Ali Beth Stuckey's book.

this is interesting. Let's see if I can get it. There we go. Now you can see us and you can see the article if you're watching.

This is by Jonathan McDonald. And Jonathan McDonald, let's see. I think he is.

So I think he's from Great Britain. New Newcastle Upton Tyne. Yeah, I don't that doesn't sound very

American. I think he's from. So he's writing from his own experience here. And he married a

New Yorker. I read his bio earlier. So that kind of actually plays a part in this article that we're looking at.

So I looked up before I did this. I decided to look up right here. Just I was curious.

I typed in being British support for Trump poll. OK, so from earlier this year, seven and 10

Britons hold unfavorable opinion of Donald Trump. And then I clicked on this is a recent poll that Donald Trump is more popular in Britain than Sir.

Is it Keir Starmer who is the who what's his role?

He's the prime minister, I guess. Right right now. So Trump is very unpopular.

He has a negative favorability of negative 24 points. And Starmer is negative 30.

So Starmer is even more unpopular. And I don't know enough about British politics currently to comment on why that would be.

But needless to say, Trump is very unpopular. And the reasons for it, according to Mr.

McDonald, is his demeanor, his anti -establishment sentiment and his immorality, which

I thought, especially the third one was somewhat interesting. But, you know, these are things that and we're talking about evangelicals here.

These are things that you could say are concerns for like gospel coalition types,

I suppose, in the United States. Like, I don't think there's a big difference between what British evangelicals are saying about Donald Trump and their distaste for him and what establishment evangelicals in the

United States are saying. At least I don't see a huge difference. I don't know if you saw any difference there. No, it's very, very similar to those types of criticisms from Trump, from like more elite evangelicals and elite evangelical institutions and those kind of things.

Yeah. And the demeanor part is interesting because evangelicals so badly want to be accepted in broader academia, and they never seem they never will be like there is at least their institutions won't be.

Maybe there's individual evangelicals that will end up at prestigious institutions and they'll get some of that respectability.

But in general, that's not something that they can aspire towards it, but they're not going to really gain that.

And I think that's been the big problem with neo -evangelicalism as a whole, is that they pursue something that they're not going to really ever hit.

But to look down at Trump, right? To say that, well, he's not sophisticated. He speaks in such a ignorant fashion and he doesn't construct his sentences in academic ways and that kind of thing.

It's interesting because like I think that the majority of evangelicals in the United States, at least who vote for him, actually almost appreciate that about him because it's really a signal to show that I don't really care about your gatekeeping rules.

I don't I don't abide by the elite sensibilities.

I'm with you guys. And I think there's like a signal, a populist signal in that.

And maybe, you know, I'm somewhat used to it. I mean, I laugh. Some of the things Trump says, I just laugh at.

I think it's funny. I don't. Oh, he's hilarious. Yeah. Yeah. But I mean, you're in Florida where there's a lot of New Yorkers who moved down.

So, I mean, do you hear people talk like Trump in public? Because I do. I mean, yeah,

I guess there's similarities. I mean, if we're talking about like brashness and just not necessarily being polite all the time, like you see that some places.

But yeah, I mean, his language has never really shocked me that much. I guess the thing is, is that it's out of accord with like normal or what used to be normal American politics and ways of speaking.

And I think something important to note is like, you know, there's a certain attitude and class that the elite establishment, the political establishment has.

But something important to know is like, you know, Trump himself is also an elite. He's just not a political elite, you know?

And I think part of the appeal of Trump to so many across America, and I think this really came out during the

Harris campaign, is like you could just tell that her and Tim Walz were just, it was inauthentic.

It was fake. There was nothing real about it. Whereas Trump, he'd do all these things, but he didn't like try and act like he knew what he was doing.

Like when he put the garbage outfit on and all that, he didn't really like know what he was doing.

And he didn't try to because he knows what he's doing. He's a rich New Yorker dressing like this.

I mean, like, yeah, I get you guys. No, not that even. I don't get you guys, but I'm here anyways, kind of thing.

You know, like I haven't lived your life, but I care about you basically. People, they appreciate that he's

Trump all the time. Like regardless of what he's doing, he doesn't like adjust the way he behaves and the way he acts.

And I think that people in America, like they really appreciate just him being authentic almost.

And it kind of reminds me of that one. Speaking of British evangelicals, that one called Truman rise and triumph of the modern self about how modern people highly value authenticity and things like that.

And I think that does come out in the Trump phenomenon because he's, he's real. You could just tell he's a real guy.

He acts rich because he is rich and doesn't pretend to not be rich. Unlike so many of these politicians in Washington.

I just want to respect so many of them more if they just acted like what they were, like, just do that. Like. Yeah.

Kamala Harris was every time. And, you know, the joke was every question started with. And the answer,

I was born into a middle -class family. And it just sounded so inauthentic. She's trying to try too hard to prove that she's something that we know whether she was or wasn't, she's not that anymore.

And yeah, Trump just kind of embraced who he was. And when he put on the McDonald's thing,

I mean, he was like, he wasn't trying to prove that these are my roots.

This is where I come from. He's just saying like, I think what you just said is, is actually a good way to phrase it.

He's with you. And I think Christians in the United States feel very late.

Maybe this is a difference. I tend to think it probably is between the UK and the United States in the

United States that we have a Bible belt. We have still a very significant Christian influence, especially in the southern

United States. And in the UK, it's pretty much secular at this point.

I mean, even their official church is waving trans flags and they're selling buildings to mosques and this kind of thing.

And I think because of that dynamic, in part, you have Christians being an actual political threat.

Like they're a force to be reckoned with. They can actually sway elections. And without them,

I mean, Trump would certainly not be in office. There's no question about that. Whereas in Britain, they're kind of a negligible force.

So they're often mocked. They're often made fun of and just they're viewed as a threat.

They're called dangerous. They're called Nazis. And the worst things you can imagine being called in the

United States, evangelicals are called that by sometimes very influential people. And Trump is willing to identify with them and speak at their events and not be ashamed of being even at a pro -life march.

And he'll say, I mean, even when he talks about evangelicals, like he does every group, he'll say the evangelicals.

He'll be like, we're going to make things great for you. We're going to protect the evangelicals. We're going to protect

Christianity. And he views it so much in terms of success, like success, failure.

That's like the scale that he uses to evaluate whether or not something's going in the right direction.

Is it being successful? And so he looks at them as a group and he says, I embrace you. I want you to prosper.

I want your religion to do well. And even as an outsider, he wants to make sure that they're not vilified in the way that they have been.

Whereas I think in Britain, this is, this dynamic doesn't exist as much. They're just not,

I'm not saying evangelical, because the Bible is attacked in Britain, but, but evangelicals aren't the political threat that they are in the

United States. And I think that just makes a difference. So, you know, I don't know that like British politicians are going to events that evangelicals put on to try to elicit support in that kind of thing.

You know what I mean? So it's very keenly felt in the United States that you're less than if you're an evangelical in any kind of influential setting.

So, but any, anything you have to add to that before we go to the second criticism here? No, that was all very succinct and well put.

The second criticism is, and we actually started flowing into this, an anti -establishment sentiment.

I'll just read what Mr. MacDonald says. Do you want to put it on the screen? Oh yeah,

I could do that. Hold on. We have the technology. There we go. All right.

This is related to the second criticism that Trump is decidedly an anti -establishment figure. The British church does not like the anti -establishment sentiment.

There is a widespread feeling that such an attitude contradicts the apostle's injunction, honor the emperor. One of the applications of which is held to be always believe the best of the government, even when it does something bad.

But Americans are not so naive. There, the establishment has presided over crippling inflation, rents rising four times faster than wages, the influx of millions of illegal immigrants and an education system teaching their children that white

Christian men are the source of the world's problems. In short, the anti -establishment feeling is entirely justified in America.

It is not wrong for Trump campaign. You know, this is I'm reading this and I'm thinking like Britain.

And again, like I haven't gone to Britain and witnessed this with my own eyes, but everything that I see on social media about Great Britain, they seem to be dealing with the same problems like, you know, there they have.

They have their own immigration issues. They have their own issues with violence. They even have a two tiered police system.

So I don't know if I completely understand this. And maybe it's just because I don't have eyes on the ground there.

But I would think that conservatives in Britain and evangelicals being included in that, that they would they would want someone to come and shake things up a bit on those issues.

But maybe it's the pomp and circumstance. I don't know. Like there is this sort of like following form and knowing protocol in Britain that is highly valued.

And, you know, manners are still, at least in the higher classes, very just like it's worth its weight in gold there.

You can't violate certain social mores. Whereas in the United States, maybe because of our

Hollywood pop culture and stuff, we've we've abandoned a lot of the rigid social rules that used to exist.

And, you know, and maybe that's why you look at Trump. And when he does goofy things like, you know, hosts the host, the national champions and he gives them all

Big Macs, you know, to eat at the White House, you know, stuff like that. I think in Britain that would be like you'd be mortified.

You can't go to the palace or even a parliament and expect Big Macs like, you know, and Trump's like, yeah, we'll get fries.

We'll get Big Macs. I mean, this is what they eat. This is what I eat. Let's do it. So I don't know if you have any thoughts on that.

But, yeah, Americans, I think, have always British people have always looked down on Americans, I think, for this, for at least for quite a while, like Americans are just uncivilized more so.

Yeah, it's just a mainly just difference in cultures. Like, obviously, our country was founded, you know, by a bunch of men of Anglo -Saxon descent.

And they retained a lot of those customs and cultures. And we still retain a lot of it as well.

Anyways, I mean, there's that one Scalia clip where he's talking about how he's you know, he goes to Britain and it's like, wow,

I feel like I'm back home, you know, like despite the fact that he's like, you know, I'm he's like, look at this

Italian mug. You think this looks like an Anglo? And then he's like, but I went to England. I fell home because he's an

American. And so we still have like a sort of kinship with them. There are fathers in some sense.

But yeah, no, we just we have different cultures. And not only do we have different we not only do we have a different culture, we have different cultures, you know, all over the country.

There's not there's not really American culture there. We have various well, I guess, in a sense, there could be.

But for the most part, we have varying like, you know, of our own like customs and things and ways of doing things, all of which do in some sense or the other differ from how

Brits may may do it. But again, I say this as someone who like yourself, I'm not on the grounds in any place in the

UK or England or anything like that. I know we're just two Americans talking about this. I know we're just we're just yapping about this stuff like we know we're talking about.

No, no. But genuinely, I think that it's just large cultural differences and how we like in our attitudes and approach to certain things.

But I mean, clearly, with Trump's election, there is a somewhat you know, there's people have a desire for someone like him to be there or they look back at his first term and they're like, yeah, that wasn't the greatest thing ever, but it was a whole lot better than what we just had now.

So I think that, you know, it just it says something about the American populace more so than, you know, anything going on in Britain.

I'm seeing if I could find stats on the percentage of. So in Britain, 46 .2

percent of the people claim to be Christians. Which we know they have an official church. So, I mean, there's probably a lot of people claiming that who like who knows if they attend in Scotland.

It's only oh, get this. The Church of Scotland is only 20 .4 percent. Man, that is loud.

Yeah. And of course, you have rising it

Muslim and Hindu and these other religions. I'm kind of wondering what church attendance is.

Since we're since I'm looking it up, I know this isn't really the necessarily the topic of the podcast, but since we're talking, it's fine, it's fine.

It's interesting. Yeah, it is because they are our cousins. I mean, that's how often, you know, people refer to Great Britain.

They're the American cousins. But we always think that if you hear a British accent that adds like 20 IQ points.

Yeah, they could be a blithering idiot. We would still think that they're intelligent because they have an accent.

And I think they look at us, especially New York accents like Trump has or maybe I don't know what they think about Southern accents, to be honest with you, because that's a kind of a north south difference.

Like the north kind of looks down at the south. But I don't know if the British people I don't know what they think of that. But, you know, they tend to look down at Americans.

I get that impression, at least. All right. So. I don't know.

What am I looking at here? I pulled up a chart that says six hundred and fifty.

That doesn't make any sense. Number of attendees in thousands. Oh, all right. It's giving me the raw data.

I wanted the percentage. So, all right. Maybe by the end of the podcast, I'll have it figured out how many actually attend church.

But still, like just the percentage, though, that's so different than the United States where you have.

So it's in the 80s, I think the high 80s of the people who claim to be Christians in the United States. And I'm sure the attendance far exceeds

Great Britain, where people in the Bible actually go to church. I mean, in places like Mississippi, I think it's still somewhere around 50 percent, you know, if I'm not mistaken.

I mean, it's still it's probably falling, but you still have a substantial amount of people heading to church on Sunday mornings.

So they're kind of like, you know, ahead of us, not in a good way on that front.

But all right. So what's the next thing he says? I'll go back to the article here.

Mr. MacDonald says that immorality. Now, this is an interesting one, that British Christians are horrified by American evangelical support for Trump, given his sexual immorality.

Now, I couldn't wrap my head around this because Britain is so decadent. Like now, maybe it's the cities

I'm thinking of, right? Like London. But like, you know, Britain is just.

Their religious establishment is officially marrying homosexuals.

It's pro trans. You know, British people are kind of known to be raunchy.

And, you know, despite the the caricature of the pomp and circumstance and protocol, they're still they're known to be quite immoral.

And and I just I can't wrap my head around this a little bit. So this is where I think my American limitations are coming out.

He says that they recognize that it is the anti -Trump side, the liberal establishment that undermined the national

Christian culture and made those things acceptable again in the first place. Biden, Harris and the rest are the heirs of the push for the sexual revolution of which

Trump is a predictable product. It's the black paintbrush calling the kettle black. Consequently, many

American evangelicals have little time for it. This is very far from saying Trump is any less to blame. But it is a good reason as to why in this context,

American evangelicals are not so concerned by it. So, you know,

I don't really know what to make of that. Other than maybe in Britain, there's more of a sense of like our leaders should be a scale above us and have cookie cutter lives and that kind of thing.

They still have a royal monarchy. So they obviously have these examples to look to that are different than the examples we have.

Yeah, if I were to if I were to guess, because as I said earlier, you know, I'm not on the ground in Britain, but based off my perception, it seems, you know,

I'm just realizing this sweater is a perfect thing or this jacket is a perfect thing. Anyway, sorry,

ADHD just got me. But I think that if I were to if I were to speculate, there is a lot of concern within British culture for external appearances, which is not always bad.

I don't say that in a negative way. I think that you I think the external matters. It matters the way that you dress. It matters the way that you present yourself.

It matters the way that you talk like those things do matter. I think that probably in that culture, that is of a higher value.

So even if things are a bit more risque in terms of behavior, perhaps, as you were saying,

John, I don't I don't know. I can't vouch if that's that's correct or not. I don't know the Brits well enough to say that they're all just degenerates deep down.

I'm just playing. But yeah, I'm not I'm not sure about that. But I do I do based off my appearance, see that they would be concerned about how you present yourself and things like that.

And so for Trump, the way that he is, where he doesn't really care as much in regard to some of those things, that would be distasteful for for British evangelicals.

And again, if I were to guess, I think the reason why the author would be putting this article together, being someone who is from Britain, would be because, you know, you see a lot of these gentlemen on Twitter who are from the

United Kingdom who will say certain things about Trump or comment on it, who sometimes move to America and they will comment on Trump and why they don't necessarily like him.

I think that's probably what prompted the article as well, is because they can almost be a bit representative of British evangelicals back in the

UK and their perception of him. Yeah. Yeah. I suppose if the shoe is on the other foot, you would have gospel coalition types and Christianity Today types talking about how horrible it is that Britain has a prime minister who acts in such unbecoming ways.

So I don't know. I think it's also like it's easy to believe the media and not like something that's distant from you to just say you're not living in the conditions that the

United States, exactly the same conditions that people in the United States are living under. And when, you know, it's not your house that's on fire, it's easy to criticize the firemen.

It's easy to say that they're doing this and that wrong when it's your house, though. You're not quite like you just need someone to pump some water onto it.

So we'll take questions if anyone has them.

I don't know if we could get much more traction out of this. I mean, the British people are probably offended that two Americans are just commenting on this article and giving our bigoted assumptions about what

British people are like. Yeah. Well, blame the blame the British gentleman who submitted the article or the this is the truth script sponsored podcast.

We got to we got to touch on this, you know, right. We were talking about what are we going to talk about? And that was one of the things I thought, oh, yeah, that would be a good topic.

Now, I'll briefly we'll go into this just since we do have some more time. I don't know.

Did did you read the article on the book review? Ali's new book or no, I did not.

I did not look over. All right. So this is a article first on toxic empathy by Ali Beth Stuckey.

And Amy Simmons is probably one of the best writers on truth script. She's just really good. And she does a very thorough analysis of the book.

And so I haven't read Ali's book, but I have read Amy's take on it.

And one and I just thought this would be interesting to get into. But, you know, this word empathy, empathy, excuse me, this word empathy is now somewhat of a controversial word, which is interesting because it didn't used to be at all.

But I think people like Joe Rigney and I remember Doug Wilson did a podcast on this a while ago, have targeted it and said, basically, like you shouldn't be expected to have empathy for like situations you cannot possibly like.

Why should you try to put your shoes in yourself in that person's shoes? You got to have sympathy for them. But empathy, it is often used in manipulative ways to say that you must fully understand someone before you can truly speak into a situation.

Right. And you can't do that unless you're standing in their shoes. Right. And in order to have empathy, you have to believe everything they're saying.

You have to immerse yourself from their perspective in the situation. You can't come at it from a bird's eye view.

And and so there's a lot that could be said about that. And there's a lot that Amy Simmons says about this, showing essentially that that thesis is correct, that at least the critique of empathy.

But I was looking at the title of the book, how progressives. Where is the title?

How progressives exploit? I can't find it. The title to Ali's book.

I think it's how progressive exploit Christian empathy or something like that. I'm going to just look it up real quick so I make sure

I know what I'm talking about here. And this is something that I thought of a lot like the left really does exploit

Christian empathy or Christian sensibilities,

Christian love. I mean, they take the concepts from Christianity and then they weaponize them and say that you don't have those unless you accept

LGBT people and accept means celebrate their lifestyle. Right. You don't you're not welcoming immigrants.

Where's your Christians love? And, you know, that's that's something

I think we need to be aware of because we fall for it so often, like like so often, like that's, in my opinion, the evangelical influencers.

But main objective seems to reconcile Christianity with the world along these lines.

So anyway, it's called Toxic Empathy. I got the title now. Allie Beth Stuckey argues how progressive, how progressive right now it's not loading, how progressives exploit

Christian compassion. OK, it's compassion, not empathy. But she basically goes on to talk about empathy in the book.

So these soft concepts, I guess you could call them these concepts that Christians are supposed to be providing to other

Christians, the one and others, you know, think of like all the helpful things that we're supposed to do for our neighbor and first to those of the household of faith.

We're supposed to bear one another's burdens. Right. Husbands are supposed to love their wives in an understanding way, which is a very hard thing for many husbands to do.

We have the first Corinthians chapter 13 and all the descriptions of love as being something that preferences others and the progressive left approaches us so often.

And I think this actually flows into the Trump thing. They approach us with this like standard that they say that we have and they pretend like it's a shared standard.

Like, oh, we want that, too. We want that sensitivity, that love, that empathy, all of that. And in order to do that, though, you must do it on our terms, which means

Trump is mean. Trump's terrible. And therefore, you should dump him overboard.

You know, and I've had this thought so many times, like we fall for it so often.

What is to keep us from buying into that, buying into the frame of the left and then applying like a

Christian term? Sometimes they'll vacate the actual meaning of the term. They'll suck it out and they'll impose their own meaning onto it or other times they will take the proper concept, but they just apply it in the wrong context.

Like the government's job is not to, you know, do what the church or an individual would do with someone who's, you know, loving someone who's coming across the border, let's say, illegally.

Like the government has a different role in that particular situation. You're loving your enemy and praying for those who persecute you.

Like the government's job is to go kill people and break things when they violate the laws and jeopardize the safety of the population.

So I don't know if it's that simple, if it's just like the question is, we've just got to get our roles straight or if there's something else going on in addition to that where like these terms are just being gutted and then we're left with kind of like sitting in the ruins of like, what was a

Christian civilization? And we're left with these soft, kind of like the soft concepts from Christianity without the hard, more masculine.

Like we've been left with the more feminine, more, you know, nurture kind of centric concepts to fill out our

Christianity. And we don't have anything of the aggression against sin, the war, the spiritual war that we all are in, the armor of God.

I mean, there's so many like violent sounding things, bravery and courage. So anyway,

I'm waxing long on this, but I don't know if you have any thoughts on that, because this is something that I've seen come up over and over.

No. So just to preface, I have many thoughts, but yeah, just to preface, I never really kept up a lot with the like Rigney, Wilson, or I know it went before them as well.

The Empathy Award is really, I kind of saw it like I'd scroll on Twitter and I'd see something, but it never really captured my interest.

So I may have a unique perspective here. Because you don't have any empathy. Exactly. Yeah, that's my problem.

No, jokes aside, I actually, so I do not really have a problem with the term empathy.

Empathy is fine and good, actually. I think that as a Christian, you should have empathy for sinners.

You should be able to place yourself in the shoes of other people in order to better understand them and what they're going through and why they're doing what they're doing.

All that being said, you're absolutely right about the fact that oftentimes the left will try to, you know, assume a

Christian framework just for the sake of the argument and say, oh, well, you need to have more empathy for this person.

And the problem is, is that you can never untether empathy from justice and duty.

You can't do that. So, for example, thinking of illegal immigration, is it just to permit illegals to stay in this country with no legal punishments?

And we would say, no, that is actually unjust. Can you place yourself in the shoes of illegals to understand why they're doing what they're doing?

Absolutely. Should you? Sure. Go ahead. Does that overturn the rule of justice? No. And that's the problem with many who will adopt the empathy framework is that they will use it to eschew justice and duty.

And because they're being, to be frank, they're being manipulated by other people to do these things. And so empathy is fine insofar as it is in check with justice, which is why, again, you can understand why people do what they do while still saying that still deserves punishment.

So, for example, if someone's in like a crazy argument with their girlfriend or boyfriend, whatever, and they're just stressed to the max and they tell you their story and then they ended by being like, and I killed him.

You can understand how they got there. Like, it makes sense. You could place yourself in your shoes and say, I really,

I understand why you did that. That was wild. But you can also say that was the wrong thing to do and you actually should be punished for it.

And so in that sense, if you can be empathetic, you can understand why they did what they did while still saying justice needs to occur.

And the problem with so many people with empathy or emphasizing empathy is that they don't have in mind justice.

They don't have in mind duty. What is someone to do? What is your duty to do? Is it you can understand why they did that, but that was they violated their duty.

And so I think it's important to have empathy to understand where people are coming from while still being able to maintain that justice does still need to be met.

If you're like counseling a young dude who's been struggling with pornography or something like that.

I don't know if I'm supposed to say that on YouTube. My bad. I'll say pornography instead. OK, cool. But if someone's been struggling with that, you're not going to be like, yeah, man, it's

OK, man. I've been in your shoes, too. I get it, man. Like the lust, the temptation's hard.

You may say something like that, but you're still going to be like, oh, you need to stop, though, by the way, because if you don't stop, you may send yourself to hell.

Like this may actually cost you eternity. If you don't put this into death, you may be separated from God, actually.

So you need to be hard about things. You can be empathetic while still saying, what is your duty?

Your duty is to is to give to God that which is due. Part of that is keeping his law, even if you do so imperfectly.

But still, like some sins are so wicked and heinous, such as watching corn, that it will get you like that.

That's not good for you. You will get yourself in deep trouble if you continue down a path like that.

And so you can have empathy, but you also need to you need to be a bit hard, too. You need to understand justice and what justice requires and what duty requires of people.

So have empathy. It's fine. You know what? Shoot me, Joe Rigney. I'm sorry. But do so with justice in mind.

Well, we have a high priest who can relate, right, who understands the trials we go through because he was tempted in all points yet without sin.

And that's that's something that would you call that empathy? I don't know. I don't really get hung up on the word myself because you could do the same thing with sympathy or compassion or any other of these words, really.

I mean, liberals don't usually use empathy as their primary word for for this anyway. They'll they'll say you're not being loving.

That's usually the thing I hear. Like you're you're just a cold person because you're not accepting some sin, some lifestyle or something.

And and so is sympathy a bad word because it's misused? No. So, yeah, empathy, sympathy, any of those things like as a historian, like when you're studying a historical record, you must go back and try to see things from a limited vantage point.

Sometimes like you literally you must purposefully put yourself in the shoes.

Same thing with journalism or like so many fields actually have this where in order to understand why a person does what they do, you have to look at try as best as you can to look at what they were looking at, what they were seeing, what they were feeling, what they were hearing, what all of those kinds of things.

And, you know, watch CSI or any of the crime shows. Right. That's how they're trying to figure things out because they know human nature.

And then, you know, humans tend to act this way because we have a we have patterns.

And so that is sorry. So like anyway, you should be able to analyze.

And I like I can't put myself in the shoes of someone who's a pedophile, for example. Right. Like, you know,

I just. Yeah. Yeah. Like, I can't relate to that one bit.

But let's say like as a pastor, you're training for the ministry. Right. You someone comes into your office and says,

I'm struggling with this. Like, you can't just like shriek and, you know, immediately like you have to help them.

You have to figure out what to do. You don't need empathy like like you don't need to accept what they're doing or put yourself in their shoes literally to to accomplish that.

You can, in a general sense, understand what temptation is and then you can bring the spiritual tools that God's given us to fight that kind of thing.

Correct. And that's yeah, I think you're right. That should be the focus of this whole thing. Like it's when the left tries to because that's what they're doing.

They're trying to deconstruct the moral standards and the creation norms.

And they're doing it by using these virtues and that we the good manners even like protocol and that kind of thing.

Like, you know, you'd be unwelcoming if you didn't celebrate. Yeah. You did the pride flag or at your job or something like that.

You're just it's bad manners. Right. And like, well, where did manners come from? Like, oh, well, you know, in our society,

Christianity influenced our manners and they take into account gender differences. And that's why you open a door for a woman.

Right. And all kinds of things. But but they're trying to use that against us by claiming that we're we're operating on a standard that is in conflict.

Yeah. And something else that I would point out as well is that a lot of these people that advocate for empathy, it's always leftward.

You know, it's always like, oh, feel empathy for the migrant, the homosexual, the transgender.

It's always that way. No, not the white supremacist. The Klansman. Not the racist. Not the

Klansman. You know, you never do that. They they never they never try to put themselves in those shoes.

You know, and it's just like it's sort of reveal. And what that reveals is the manipulative tactic that they're engaging in is that they're not actually trying to have empathy.

They're trying to weaponize your good Christian virtues in order to make you a political tool for what they want, which is just more progress, which is actually just, you know, regression into degeneracy.

Like it's simple. It's really not that hard to see if you have an ounce of prudence.

But yeah, I just always think, do they have empathy for this person? Oh, they only have empathy for this type of person.

A very interesting how that works, you know. So it's just. Why don't the

British evangelicals have more empathy for Trump? You know, poor guy got almost assassinated twice.

He was, you know, on his way to potentially prison. He was raided by the

FBI. His home was invaded. I mean, why don't where's the empathy, man? I mean, come on. Right.

But, you know, Trump, it's not even a thought that you would have sympathy for Trump or empathy or compassion or any of that.

And that may be part of the problem, even with that article we read on the British and their evangelicals in their view, is that they're looking at Trump and their their critique is that he's not he doesn't fall into line on these

Christian virtues enough, these more softer or more tender virtues, which we should have.

We should have these things. But, you know, they're they're only looking at that and they're only applying it to Trump.

They're not applying it to everyone else and they're not looking at the other side of the equation, which is when you're in the role of being a magistrate, your job is to apply the laws to get bad guys.

It's to make sure your people actually prosper and are taken care of, protected primarily against threats.

So, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'd say so. We've concluded the British have the problem, not

Trump in this. Tim says that British evangelicals are swallowed up by social justice and they have forgotten eschatological realities.

Are you from Britain, Tim? Let me know. Those mountains do not look like Britain behind you. But, you know, maybe

I don't know. They're bare. Scotland has bare mountains. Could be. It's like the argument of equality versus equity.

The current definitions matter. They are not comparable concept. Ben or Mahler. Yeah. You know, it's funny because if you read a

Bible like a King James Bible, it equity is throughout the Old Testament. And I don't know.

You know, it's like, you know, I don't know, Matthew, if you had this happen, but every time you bring up democracy, like if you're in the right circle, there's always someone to correct you and say it's a republic.

Right. America is a constitutional republic. I know. Yeah. You can thank Stephen Crowder from like twenty seventeen for that.

Yeah. It's tiring. I get it sometimes, but it's just like, guys, just like, come on, like what's the conversation?

Yeah. But it's the same thing now with the empathy or the the whole equity equality thing.

Like if I say equality and how the left is isn't your egalitarian and they're just after equality,

I'll have someone to correct me. It's like it's equity. You know, equality is good. Equity is bad.

And I'm like, oh, they watch some PragerU video like, you know, because equality that was the word used up until five seconds ago.

And frankly, it still is in many quarters of the left. They still use equality in an egalitarian sense.

No, equity was the big hot word, but it's like it'll change once there's a microscope on it.

They switch to another word. And so anyway. Yeah. Empathy, maybe a bit like that.

I don't know. But oh, well, it's Switzerland, apparently, Tim says.

Oh, very nice. Yeah. So I would love to go to Switzerland as another place. I haven't had my eyeballs on. I would love to see

Switzerland, but I don't see many questions. I see a lot of statements.

But hey, appreciate, Terry, the ninety nine cents there. Thank you. It does.

It adds up and goes a long way and it helps Matthew pay for dates. True. I have one

Friday. Oh, man. I hope you're not you're not doing like a Trump thing and taking her to McDonald's.

No, no, no, no. Not a little more upscale than that. Maybe Texas Roadhouse.

I don't know. See that. That'd be nice. There's one like three minutes away from my apartment. So there we go.

Oh, you can't beat their cinnamon butter. That's incredible. It's going to get me so fat if I keep going.

My wife and I like that was our place and we were dating because it's so cheap and it's good. And so it's got

I mean, steak is steak is great. So. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. So anyway. Well, we're an hour in.

This is the last call for questions and then we're going to end the podcast because Matthew's got quizzes. Pray for him or tests.

Sorry. Finals. Lots of lots of papers. One one big Greek final exam.

So we'll pray that I pass that and don't have to retake Greek to I told my wife today,

I need to finish. I've been teasing that I have this book almost done forever and I keep adding to it.

And I said, I'm finishing it by Christmas. Like, that's the final date. And I realized when I was in school, when

I was in seminary, like you are, Matthew, I got so much more done like because I think

I've always said deadlines for yourself. Yeah. Yeah. And yeah, without the deadlines, I'll just play with my daughter forever or, you know, do do whatever.

Oh, no. Caring for your family. How bad? Well, sometimes it's not. It's not the. Yeah, I'd love I'd love it to just be that.

But, you know, sometimes, you know, I'm like, why was I scrolling on my phone for the last 30 minutes? True. Yeah, that's that's something

I've placed limitations on because that's crazy, though, because I didn't even use zoomers grew up with this kind of stuff.

I didn't. And it's so easy. Like, you know, there's so many funny things out there to watch.

And oh, yeah. Anyway, it's a whole nother topic. But any upcoming content?

We got questions coming in. Any upcoming content on the reformed civil war? Oh, gosh. Matthew's got all kinds of opinions on this.

No, I intentionally just keep my trap shut and just watch the chaos from the corner. I'm actually going to be on a podcast,

Lord willing, Friday for Wrath and Grace to talk about the Antioch Declaration. And I said

I wasn't going to talk about it anymore. But this is in the interest of, as I understand it, peace and understanding.

So that's good. A few of my name submissions made it on there. So I was very happy. A few of your what?

Oh, my name. Don't say this. Don't say this. Get all of us in trouble.

No, no, no. They were all very appropriate names. There was nothing wicked or heinous. I remember when the

Dallas statement came out, there was all these names that people were flooding out with names.

And you had I remember I logged on and it was like all these Nazi names said sign the Dallas statement.

I mean, it's yeah. I mean, some people get all bent out of shape. It's kind of Joe Goebbels. I don't know who that guy is.

Goebbels might have been one of them, actually. So that's do either of you think animals who. Oh, my gosh.

Do we have time for this? Who have lived and died suffering because of Adam's sin will be individually resurrected in the new creation? I think so.

Based on Colossians and Ephesians. Next question. I don't know on that one.

You know, we'll see what God does. You can go the Thomas Aquinas route or you could go the SCOTUS route. Write an article for TruthScript.

Yeah. On that topic. Probably not. But, you know, I'll see what I can do over winter break, John. Or well, or, you know, whoever's listening because there was

I think it's Catholics primarily that do that. So a Catholic friend of mine years ago sent me a whole article on why he thought it was basically the forms.

And yeah, it was a very sort of platonic type argument. But I wonder if the

British evangelicals have a divided outlook between the elite and the rank and file, such as in the

US. I do not know. Paul, let's see, this is not this. OK, I think that's the last.

Oh, well, you publish it. I have an article written needs editing. I'm not that's not my decision that goes to the editors and I am not one of them.

But I mean, I would certainly look at it. And, you know, I think, hey, if it's a good biblically based argument, then why not?

Right. All right. Well, that is it for the American Churchman podcast. Thank you, everyone, for streaming.

Thank you, Matthew, for co -hosting. And we will see you, Lord willing, next week.